Thursday, April 3, 2014

Crazy Ones: From Cry-Baby to Zombie Killer

My life
has been an extended episode of Black Folk Don't. At times, it seems I
purposefully throw myself into subcultures where I'll never see people that
look like me: metal music, sci-fi and fantasy literature, goth subculture,
alternative religious beliefs... it goes on. I admit I've had an easier time,
but only if because in the21st century people tend to disguise things under a
veneer of “colorblindedness”.

Really,
the only place that has definitely never told me "no" is horror. When
I was growing up, horror films were a rite of passage. Popcorn, blankets,
cuddled up in front of the TV in the dark, remote in hand ready to stop the
movie for whoever dared uttered a peep. And, for some reason, the AC was always
on to make the room frigid. Maybe that was just us.

The
scarier the better.

If you
couldn't sit through it, you were branded a cry-baby the rest of your life,
stamped on your life's permanent record and doomed to follow you around like a
bad rap. I was a cry-baby. I always closed my
eyes on the scary parts. Couldn't sit through anything without crying and
screaming. What got me the most—and still does—was possessed, inanimate
objects. That's right; dolls, fans, televisions... needless to say, I never got
through much of the Child's Play
series or Poltergeist at that time. I
had way too many stuffed animals and lamps in my room to be playing around like
that.

At
sleepovers, my cousins or friends would pry my hands away from my eyes and make
me watch the killings and jump scares. They'd laugh in good fun, but something
was happening that no one noticed. I didn't get the “rush” of being scared. My
palms would sweat, my heart would race, I would have vivid nightmares for days
and weeks afterward and break down in tears whenever something happened that
reminded me of a scary movie—a sound, a poster, the music, anything. The whole
point of horror movies, right?

As it
turns out, I was possibly experiencing anxiety attacks that would later ramp up
as a part of my depression, which I would be diagnosed with much later. Now,
the line between, “you were just a kid, of course you were freaked out!” and
full on panic attacks becomes a little blurred, but even without understanding
all that back then, I knew I was extremely pissed that my family and friends
were making me feel so uncomfortable.

Horror
movies weren't very fun for me. But something changed when I was about six
years old. I saw a movie on one of the “adult” channels my Dad and I could
agree on—AMC. It was The Fly (1956).
I knew this was technically a “horror” movie, but something about it drew me
like a fly to... well, you get it.

I sat
and watched the movie with a round green laundry basket over my head in case I
got too scared. It was slow moving and in black and white. Something my dad
would like, so basically boring. As I fiddled with the laundry basket, there
was Vincent Price on the screen—I knew him, I liked him. The lady in the movie
was hysterical and that was pretty funny to me. When the big reveal of the
titular abomination of science came, I quickly twisted the basket around, but
peeked through one of the holes to see what I was afraid of.

A guy
in a fly's head costume. I thought, 'What?
Seriously? Was this all there was?' I laughed; the rush didn't hurt, I
didn't start panicking. I was fine! The final ending of the movie shocked me,
but suddenly I wanted to gab about the movie for days with my parents to their
surprise. I even wrote my very first fan-fiction around it: a very melodramatic
tale about a housewife and her mad scientist husband. Wonder where I got that
from.

So
that's all horror was to me. But for balance and measure, I watched my dreaded
nemesis—Psycho, a movie I had
steadfastly avoided because of the murder scene and the skeletons. I watched it
all the way through again with a laundry basket on my head. I didn't understand
a lot of what was happening, but it blew my mind. I declared Alfred Hitchcock a
genius that very night and eventually made my way through his filmography but
that's another story for another time.

I had
developed my own little ritual until soon I didn't need the basket at all.
Watching scary movies by myself had become a minor way of taking back control
and healing from what my peers had done to me. I could watch things on my own
terms, and it demystified the whole experience for me until it was actually as
fun as everyone claimed it was. It wasn't long before my interest in all things
spooky bloomed and I was reading articles on serial killers and the movies
inspired by them, watching slashers and exploitation films like it was my job.

So
all's well that ends well, right? Not quite. There's another bump in the story.
Post-Columbine, I suddenly found my interests turned against me. My spookiness
and all-black dress and shrinking violet demeanor were no longer quirks but
branded me a future school shooter. Not many of my fellow girls wanted to talk
about Freddy Krueger and Leatherface, so I hung out with a lot of guys (whether
I wanted to or not). That clearly meant I was gay. I was crazy because I knew a
lot about Ed Gein. I also had the distinction of visible self-harm marks on my
arm. These traits helped me fit in seamlessly with the outsider groups at my
high school, which was okay for a while until that too became a problem.

It
didn't take me long to note my token status in the groups. There were other
girls, finally, but I was definitely the only black kid. And the butt of many
racist jokes that I either had to tolerate for the sake of having friends or
knock someone out over. I slowly began to draw away from them without much
fanfare. I managed to bypass a lot of high school angst but, as my untreated
depression became acute, I had a lot of inner turmoil.

Films
became an escape. Horror, in a twisted way, became a cathartic release for me.
I had fantasies of torturing the rich, popular, snobby white girls and horror
was all too eager to grant me that vicarious pleasure. The Final Girl was pure,
virginal, white, and sane—I didn't see myself in her at all. I related with the
giggling psychos with the tortured backstory. Or the mindless killers with
voices in their heads screaming for revenge. As my self-harming routines amped
up, I became obsessed with gore, stumbling on to movies like Mondo Cane and Ichi the Killer as an outlet for what was happening to me.

“Maybe
I AM nuts,” I began wondering after awhile.

Fortunately,
the internet would be my salvation. Sometime in high school, I discovered
horror movie blogging and I never went back. I loved it. I maintained a
Livejournal for years, but never thought of actually blogging with a purpose.
And here were a bunch of people that shared my interests, talked, and thought
like me for the most part. I would brought in my over-analytical film analysis
powers and started blogging on my own, finding a nice niche in forgotten horror
films and obscure sequels. I loved it. I had followers to talk to about things
I couldn't talk about offline. I was very happy for a while. And then I discovered the black feminist blogosphere. Oh
dear.

Learning
about social justice was perhaps a more traumatic revelation than the first
time I learned I had depression—everything suddenly made horrible, vivid sense. Everything about my world changed
and I couldn't see things the same way again. On one hand, it was beneficial in
opening my eyes to what was really around me and encouraging me to seek help
for my depression. But on the other hand, it made me really angry. All my old
friends began to fall by the wayside as I sneaked in more race and gender
analysis into my regular movie viewing, which is apparently illegal.

Mentioning
that horror films make great use of racist and ableist tropes will get you
ridiculed because, “it's just a movie!” It was hard to explain what these
things meant to me, even with my expanded vocabulary. At this point I was
getting tired of the whole “crazy = axe murder” trope as I was working through
my therapy. Unfortunately, American films love this so it got harder to watch
some of my old favorites without feeling a little miffed. I got really heavily
into K-horror at this point, which seemed to me more culturally-based and thus
far more interesting in that I couldn't
relate to it.

While I
continued my blogging and got more political and self-aware, I got the expected
calls of being divisive or playing the race card. Fortunately for my sanity, I
had discovered the excellent Day of the Woman blog doing
similar written work so it was easy to ignore these jackals and their hit-squad
posse's running all up in my comments. What I did soon get tired of was
“tricking” people into thinking I was some white dude in his 30s waxing
nostalgic about film. That was what people expected and never thought any
different. Heaven forbid a teenage black girl exist on the internet. Admitting
I was female-bodied on the internet was bad enough (I had learned that already
from a certain imageboard), but a woman of color? Nah son.

After a
long series of mishaps in feminist blogging, I frankly grew tired as hell of
the harassment and ignorance. I took my film adventures increasingly to micro-blogging
platforms where I had a little more control, shirking off my old “friends” one
by one and connecting with my fellow black lady filmophiles. And yes, all those
qualifiers are necessary. I needed to find a place where I COMPLETELY belonged,
not just get my foot in the door because of one thing or another.

What
about horror? It was a little harder to find a clique of horror obsessed women of
color, although I knew darn well plenty of us existed. It was kind of like the
Heisenberg principle for a while, never quite running into each other and never
knowing where they are. After awhile, every time I met a fellow slasher flick
loving sista, felt a little bit more whole, like another community was growing
and my needs were being met.

From
terminal cry-baby to future high zombie-body count champion, this horror movie
journey has taken me in and spat me out. Maybe for the better, maybe for the
twisted. I just still get a little spark of joy squealing over my favorite
scenes of gore, and the occasional raised eyebrow of “you watch what?”

So I
encourage my fellow horror movie loving ladies to never give up on finding your
community, because we're out here reaching out for you with our knife glo—I
mean, caring, compassionate hands!

About the Author

E Young is a genderfluid
individual from the South who loves tentacles, cats, violent video games, and
B-movies. Ze talks about at least three of these things (not cats) on When The Urge Strikesand Twitter(@dandyxands)